Due to a significant functional improvement of information equipments, such as a personal computer, in recent years, an amount of information handled by a user is enormously increasing. In such circumstances, a storage device having recording density that is tremendously higher than those being conventionally available and a semiconductor device having higher integration degree are required.
There is a magnetic recording medium as a component implemented in the storage device. As the recent magnetic recording medium applied for the purpose of improving a recording density, a discrete track type patterned medium (DTR medium) in which the recording tracks are physically separated has been developed. An example of such DTR medium is disclosed in JP-A-7-085406.
This DTR medium is configured by a soft magnetic substance formed on recording track portions on a substrate, a ferromagnetic substance pattern formed thereon, a nonmagnetic substance formed to fill in spaces between the recording track portions, and a protection layer formed on the ferromagnetic substance pattern and the nonmagnetic substance. Basically this configuration is also applicable to the servo portion.
In the servo portion of the DTR medium in the conventional configuration, the servo patterns are formed dependent on whether or not the magnetic substance is formed. Therefore, it is common that the DC demagnetization is performed not to use the servo track writer. In contrast, in writing the data on the recording track layer, the data are written by using the magnetic head.
Therefore, in writing the recording data by using the magnetic head after the servo data are written in the servo portion, such a problem existed that the servo data being written on the servo track are overwritten by the magnetic head. In order to solve this problem, when the protection layer formed on the servo portion and the recording track is thickened, such a problem also existed that either the recording data cannot be written on the recording track by the magnetic head owing to a magnetic spacing or a playback signal is weakened in reproducing the recording data being written on the recording track.